LibLAS 1.0 Beta 1, GeoNetwork graduates, OSGeo4W looks for testers and ESRI looks at SEO
June 23, 2008 2 Comments
libLAS has moved forward and has been released as 1.0.0b1 in the hopes of attracting more testers. For those who haven’t been following, “libLAS is a BSD library for reading and writing ASPRS LAS version 1.0 and 1.1 data. LAS-formatted data is heavily used in LiDAR processing operations, and the LAS format is a sequential binary format used to store data from sensors and as intermediate processing storage by some applications.” If you deal with LiDAR on a regular basis, you might want to take a look at libLAS due to its integration with GDAL (see Hobu’s comment below). While I haven’t taken this release out for a spin yet (not dealing with LiDAR in the new job), I’m sure it goes without saying that it is a beta product so be prepared for “issues”. Yet if the goal is to get better LiDAR tools, a little pain now could result in good things for all.
In more OSGeo news, I saw that GeoNetwork graduated incubation last week. GeoNetwork has really flown under the radar and I’m pretty sure it will start to get more notice as time goes on and the need for geospatial/metadata catalogs increases.
Heck, why not one more OSGeo note? The great Frank Warmerdam posted that OSGeo4W is looking for testers and contributors. OSGeo4W can somewhat be thought of as superseding MS4W and FWTools, but it isn’t that simple. Basically it is an installer for OSGeo windows packages that allows users to easily install different OSGeo projects. Windows users wanting to get into the open source GIS world should sit up and take note.
Lastly I find it very interesting that ESRI is apparently looking for a SEO specialist (HT APB). I find that using the Google to search the ESRI forums, knowlege base articles and help is virtually impossible. I can only hope that they plan to get their support and help indexed by the world’s search engines. Of course we’ve been waiting for improved EDN search for years so I won’t be holding my breath.
